Friday, August 3, 2012

Digging day

Today the kids & I did a lot of digging in the garden. We harvested the entire carrot crop and a third of the potato crop. We enjoyed both in a favorite recipe for supper.

We have an overabundance of Dakota Red potatoes--which is really
exciting since it's the first time I've attempted to grow potatoes.
I've been searching for all my red potato recipes as well as sharing with
friends. We also have a bumper crop of tomatoes. This is a picture of one plant, and each tomato is almost as big as my fist.

However, all things are not well in our garden. It has been invaded by Japanese beetles. While I've heard of and seen them before, I have never experienced them like this. They completely destroyed the green beans just as the second round was starting to emerge. They started in on the raspberries and have been hanging out on the rhubarb and zinnias. I didn't do my research and made an impulse buy of a lure trap because I was so disgusted. It's the same concept as the bag traps, but is a reusable plastic container that has to be emptied. Apparently, no one recommends using lure traps other than the lure trap companies. I think it's true that they work too well, and you end up with more bugs in your yard than when you started. I was emptying it twice a day, and that still wasn't enough. After a week I had the equivalent of a 5 gallon bucket of stinky, rotting beetle carcasses. I had to keep the garbage outside so they didn't stink up the garage. That's when I called it quits. I trashed the trap and resorted to the old-fashioned tactic of flicking them into a bucket of soapy water early in the morning before they started flying around. Either that helped tremendously or the short adult season is ending. I learned a lot thanks to Google. I'll be much smarter next time they try to invade!

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